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It’s the Great Backyard Bird Count!

It’s the Great Backyard Bird Count!

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Red-Crowned Parrot

Red-crowned Parrot: One of several species I saw in my first GBBC

One of my earliest memories of doing a real bird count and submitting a checklist goes back exactly ten years ago when I participated in my first Great Backyard Bird Count. With my interest in birding starting to bud, I was down in SoCal visiting my family when I learned about this annual birding event. The rules were different, something about only recording the highest number of birds you see at a single time unless you were positive you were not recounting the same bird(s). You also noted things like your skill level, habitat, weather, and snow level – data that the birder no longer needs to enter into eBird checklists.

Armed with a paper notebook and pen, I was excited to participate in this activity for the first time. We scoured Irvine and Costa Mesa for birds. One new location yielded the non-native Egyptian Goose, several hummingbirds, and dozens of crows. But what I remember the most was popping up over a hill and feeling my head whirl when I found a couple hundred waterfowl crammed into a little pond. Everyone in my party moaned at the unbelievable task before us of counting them all. This was my first experience attempting to count what felt like a huge number of birds. I diligently ticked off every single bird for a total of 78 American Wigeons, 88 Mallards, and 23 American Coots. What a huge number for my first ever GBBC experience!

I did my first GBBC checklist of 2021 while looking out the apartment window this morning, thinking how much has changed in ten years. These days it’s easier than ever to record bird sightings. Our smartphones allow us to use eBird, automatically capturing data like distance traveled and time spent birding. It’s now permissible to give an estimate of the number of birds seen. Submitting a checklist do not require transferring data from a notepad to your desktop computer at home. Very convenient.

I hope you will join this annual event over the next four days. If you’ve never done it before, I encourage you to give it a try. Not only do your sightings contribute to bird conservation, it’s a great way to decompress and be in nature. Grab a friend or a Valentine sweetheart and have fun!

New Birder Toolkit

New Birder Toolkit

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Red-crested Cardinal

Red-Crested Cardinal, Hawaii. One of my favorite birds that I saw early in my birding career.

You see a bird outside your window. You hear bird songs welcome the day. A flash of brilliant colors flies by during a neighborhood walk. You are noticing birds and want to appreciate them or learn more about them. You are now entering into the birding world… But now what?

I am excited to introduce a new page on my blog: New Birder Toolkit. Here you will find a step-by-step guide on gear, field guides, and online resources to help you throughout your new birding adventures. I hope you enjoy it!

Birding with Codes

Birding with Codes

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Snowy Egret

Snowy Egret: SNEG

I’ve been a user of eBird for several years now. It’s a database of bird observations. The data collected is then used for research purposes. I find it cool that a simple effort on my part is contributing to science and bird conservation efforts. (To find out more, check out ebird.org. There’s also a free online course on the Cornell Lab Bird Academy website that explains how to use it.)

I prefer to use eBird on my smartphone, as it’s super convenient to use. At least, it felt easy until I got carpal tunnel syndrome earlier this year. My smartphone suddenly felt like a brick – awkward to hold and very heavy for my already-pained fingers.

Time to adapt. For now, I’m starting an eBird checklist on my phone so that it can calculate the distance I’ve traveled. Then I tuck my phone into my pocket for the rest of the trip. To record my observations, I have a lightweight notepad and a gel pen, which glides easier than a ball point pen.

To lessen the amount of writing, I use the standard four-letter bird codes – a shorthand for recording bird observations. This is widely used in the birding community and is featured in eBird as an option for inputting a bird’s name. When I get home, I transfer my written observations onto eBird in a way that is better for my hands.

Black-Crowned Night Heron

Black-crowned Night Heron: BCNH

I’ll admit, the codes are daunting! However, the more I use them the more I realize that there’s a clear pattern that emerges making it easy to figure out codes on the fly. It did take some practice, and I started off with practicing the codes for just the birds at my feeder.

Below are my observations about the codes – but use whatever shorthand that works for you! I use the Institute for Bird Populations for reference, using the PDF that organizes it by English name.

Boat-Tailed Grackle

Boat-tailed Grackle: BTGR

Bird Names with One Word

For birds whose name is only one word, such as Bufflehead or Killdeer, all you have to do is take the first four letters of its name to come up with the code.

Bufflehead = BUFF
Killdeer = KILL

Bird Names with Two Words

For two words, you typically take the first two letters of each word, then combine them to create the four-letter code. There are exceptions, but overall this is the general pattern.

Anna’s Hummingbird = AN + HU = ANHU
Black Phoebe = BL + PH = BLPH
Lesser Goldfinch = LE + GO = LEGO
Snowy Egret = SN + EG = SNEG

Exception: California Towhee is CALT instead of CATO. There may be other exceptions but I haven’t come across them yet – at least for Bay Area birds.

Bird Names with Four Words

I’m going to temporarily skip the three-worded names because it’s more complex and I’ll bet I’ll lose you instantly. Instead, this category is much easier as there’s not as many birds with four words in a name.

For this category, you simply take the first letter of each word to create the code. There’s no concern about whether or not the words are hyphenated. There are some exceptions to this pattern, of course.

Black-crowned Night Heron = B + C + N + H = BCNH

Exceptions:
There are two in particular I’m aware of, but there’s probably more: Black-throated Gray Warbler and Black-throated Green Warbler. The problem with these two birds is that they would both end up as BTGW! So instead, the codes reflect the last letter of the third word.

Black-throated Gray Warbler = BTYW
Black-throated Green Warbler = BTNW

Bird Names with Three Words

I find this category the most difficult. It seems to depend on whether there is a hyphen present and where. I don’t always remember where hyphens are in names, so that can present a problem. This may be a category where it’s easier to create your own shorthand.

For no hyphens, the general pattern is to take the first letter of the first two words, and the first two letters from the third word. For example:

American Tree Sparrow = A + T + SP = ATSP

When there is a hyphen, the rule I’ve observed is that the two hyphenated words offer only one letter to the code, regardless of their position.

Examples where the first two words are hyphenated:

Black-headed Grosbeak = B + H (hyphenated) + GR (no hyphen) = BHGR
Golden-crowned Sparrow = G + C (hyphenated) + SP (no hyphen) = GCSP

Examples where the last two words are hyphenated:

Western Screech-Owl = WE (no hyphen) + S + O (hyphenated) = WESO
Northern Pygmy-Owl = NO (no hyphen) + P + O (hyphenated) = NOPO

Hints of Fall

Hints of Fall

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Marbled Godwit

Marbled Godwit, Emeryville Marina

Like many birders, I get the summer blues. Breeding season has wrapped up, bird songs have quieted, fledglings are growing up, and frankly it’s too hot for humans and birds alike to be out and about.

But fall is right around the corner. This morning I saw a gaggle of Canada Geese flying silently southward in their V-formation. It reminded me of the flocks of Snow Geese, Ross’ Geese, and Greater White-fronted Geese that winter at the Sacramento NWR. Seeing that V-formation over my apartment was enough to awaken my excitement for the upcoming fall migration season.

Another sign of fall is that shorebird migration has commenced. Already I’m seeing reports of shorebird rarities popping up across the Bay Area. I realized that I’m quite rusty on shorebird ID, so I brushed up my skills by watching a Cornell Bird Academy webinar series on shorebird ID. (Side note: This is an excellent resource if you’re willing to pay $30. It reviews many aspects of shorebird identification, including behavior, habitat, shape, and more.)

One important thing about finding shorebirds is to time your visit with the tides. For example, I like to visit the Emeryville Marina and depending on the tide, I will seek out a different spot. At low tide, a thin mudflat emerges in the harbor, which entices peeps to poke around for goodies. But it’s at high tide that a variety of shorebirds, large and small, collect at the rocks against the trail facing the bay. They are pushed closer to the shore by the rising waters, giving birders a closer look. The same goes with Hayward Shoreline – you want to visit at high tide because the birds are nudged closer to the shore and within viewing range. Take a moment to observe how the tide affects your birds at your favorite shorebird spot!

Look for tide predictions at https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/.

Morning Routine

Morning Routine

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Anna's Hummingbird

Anna’s Hummingbird, one of many birds I hear in the mornings

Groggy and disoriented, I pulled myself out of bed. What day is it? Do I work today? Did I oversleep? Quarantine-brain is in full force, causing the days to blend together. Bleary-eyed, I wandered into the kitchen to grab my breakfast and watch the birds. I heard a squabble at the bird feeder just outside the window. The feeder was nearly out of the much-desired sunflower seeds causing fierce territory wars. I threw open the window, which would normally scatter all the birds, but one brave Lesser Goldfinch remained behind. She watched me grab the feeder and patiently waited for the refill.

Once the feeder was back in place, the delicate female goldfinch plopped herself onto the plate and hogged down for a solid six minutes with no interruptions from other birds. I watched as she grabbed a seed and meticulously chewed it down, all while darting her gaze looking out for danger. Her bill was plastered with chunks of seeds – I wanted to offer her a napkin. Grabbing a bit of my bagel, I moved just enough to spook her, thus ending the buffet.

The rest of the morning was spent listening to the leftovers of the morning chorus. I watched a pair of crows tend to their nest. A pair of Dark-eyed Juncos picked through dropped seeds in the gutter below. Pigeons were flapping against a brilliant blue sky. Shelter-in-place has been challenging for us humans. But sitting at the window watching the birds helps to let go of worries for just a little while.

Birding in Place

Birding in Place

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Dark-Eyed Junco

Dark-Eyed Junco

It’s been nearly a week since the beginning of the Bay Area shelter in place order, and just a few days into the California mandate to stay at home. I’ve been trying to take special care to ensure that I maintain social distancing, but I’m also currently pausing my park visits. We are allowed to go to parks for exercise, but so far I’ve been preferring to walk in my neighborhood since I figure the parks would be quite populated. I’m still adjusting to this new reality as is everyone else, and perhaps I’ll sneak in a park visit soon.

Birding is an important part of my life, and in an effort to maintain some sense of normalcy, I created a list of birding-related activities to do during these times that I wanted to share.

Bird from your window, backyard, or patio

I’m starting to slow down my pace of life. For example, i’m eating meals at the dinner table and not mindlessly shoveling down food in front of a computer. During one of my recent relaxing meals next to the window, I spotted an American Crow carrying a stick. I watched it land – a nest! I would have never noticed this camouflaged nest had I not been watching the birds while eating. Now I have something to watch during the breeding season.

Crack open your field guide or use AllAboutBirds.org to study birds

Have you mastered gulls yet? Sparrows? Sandpipers? Warblers? Now is a good time to start!

Plan future birding trips

This is definitely not a good time to travel, but that doesn’t mean you can’t plan a future trip once things get back to normal. Get planning now so that you can easily put it into action.

Sign up for a course on Bird Academy

I’ve signed up for three courses thus far. The first one I finished over the span of a year and a half – “Ornithology: Comprehensive Bird Biology.” This is really science-based. I learned about the physics of flight, biology, ecology, all the “-ology” subjects related to birds.

I’m in the process of going through the “Be a Better Birder: Shorebird Identification Archived Live Series” and “Be a Better Birder: Warbler Identification.” The first course is a recorded webinar from a few years ago, but it’s still very helpful. The second course is designed for web-based learning and so far has been enjoyable.

Paint, draw, color, needlepoint, or other projects that involve birds

Are you crafty or want to start a new creative outlet? Merge your favorite pastimes!

Subscribe to a birding magazine

What better way to spend the time indoors than reading about birds! My favorite is the Bird Watcher’s Digest which takes me a long time to read. It’s worth every penny.

Talk a walk around the block

It’s OK to get exercise! Just be sure to practice social distancing in order to keep you, family, and others safe. I already spotted an Oak Titmouse nest cavity and a possible California Scrub-Jay nesting site by slowing down and looking at the local birds.

Watch a webcam

There are a lot of webcams! Check out some of these:

Cal Falcons

Tucson Audubon Society

Cornell Feeder Watch

Ontario Feeder Watch

Panama Fruit Feeders

Watch documentaries and nature shows

Got Netflix or other streaming services? Look at their selection of nature shows. No streaming service? Go to YouTube! One tried-and-true movie that is awesome is The Big Year (2011).

October Big Day

October Big Day

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Acorn Woodpecker

Acorn Woodpecker, Del Valle RP, 2019

Ever heard of the popular “Big Year” event where birders record as many birds possible within one calendar year? It can be limited to the United States, your home state, town, or even backyard.

“October Big Day” is a worldwide event encouraging birders to submit their observations within a 24-hour period. This year the event will take place on Saturday, October 19. Make an eBird account to prepare and have fun on Saturday! Where will YOU bird?

My Birding Day: Point Reyes Part I

My Birding Day: Point Reyes Part I

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Red-Breasted Nuthatch

Red-Breasted Nuthatch, Point Reyes Fish Docks, 2019

A little over a week ago, I participated in my first all-day birding field trip, sponsored by Ohlone Audubon Society and led by local expert Bob Toleno. We birded all over Point Reyes, chasing after rare birds, and frequently stopping for photo ops from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. I was completely exhausted by the end, but it was simultaneously exhilarating.

We started the day at Bear Valley Visitor Center where we divided into carpools, did a quick bird count while standing in the parking lot, and watched a Bobcat nearby. It was chilly – the car registering in the 40s – a much welcomed relief from the never-ending heat wave of the summer.

Bobcat

Bobcat, Point Reyes Bear Valley Visitor Center, 2019

I was excited to learn that our first stop would be the Fish Docks. The day before, a Prairie Warbler and Ovenbird had been spotted there. These would be lifers for us, and I was sure that the addition of more than a dozen watchful eyes would guarantee some lifer, if not those two in particular.

We were given a short lecture on bird migration by Bob, one of many tidbits of birding ID and behavior that I would soak up like a sponge for the next 9.5 hours. Birds migrate at night and can’t see below them. When the sun comes up, birds can find themselves over the ocean. In an “oh crap” moment, they will reverse course back northward in search of land, shelter, and food. There are two places nearby that offer just that: Farallon Islands and Point Reyes, particularly the Fish Docks with a tiny concentration of trees. No wonder this spot is a rich treasure of interesting birds.

Every chip, every possible flash of yellow, every leaf movement was scrutinized by the group. Scopes were deployed surveying the ocean, cameras with long lenses were pointing every which way into the bushes and trees. It seemed like every bird was a Red-breasted Nuthatch. Their yank calls permeated the air as they crawled all over trunks and branches.

White-Crowned sparrow

White-Crowned Sparrow, Point Reyes Bear Valley Visitor Center, 2019

An otter was spotted devouring a cormorant. Western Gulls and Common Ravens were nearby for pickings. Aptly-named Elephant Seals – mainly females, kids, and an occasional young male – grunted on the beach. Lots of fun birds were spotted. But no Ovenbird. No Prairie Warbler.

Then came excitement: a report of a Yellow-green Vireo was spotted at another nearby location. We quickly adjusted our itinerary and set off towards the Mendoza Ranch.

Hanging Out With The Crows

Hanging Out With The Crows

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Young crows are vocal shiny black balls. They follow their parents around while belching out a dry “caw” sound. When a parent gives it food (by cramming its beak down the young crow’s throat), the young crow gives off a call that sounds like what I imagine a dying cat would sound like.

I’ve had coworkers come to me alarmed by this call. I reassure them that the crow is fine, it’s just eating.

A family of crows is intent on feeding on top of the medical building that I can view from my apartment window. Every so often throughout the day, the dying call wails from the young crow as it’s being fed.

I finally carved out some time to watch the feeding in action. I can easily identify the one young crow by its constant calls to be fed, as well as the very red, fleshy mouth it displays while holding its beak open waiting for sustenance.

I watched as a parent unsuccessfully pecked at a very stale piece of bread. I imagined it gave up on the bread when it meandered over to dripping water coming from an air conditioning pipe. I chuckled as it used the meager drops to wet its feathers. But wait, it wasn’t only getting a bath – it put the stale bread into the little puddle that the droplets were forming! That didn’t seem to be working too well, so it stuck the whole piece of bread into a sizable slot where the water was running. Success! Moistened bread for the win!

I tried to take pictures of the crows while this behavior played out a number of times over the last couple of weeks; however, every time I open the dirty windows to get a clear shot, the spooked crows fly away. I briefly thought about setting up a blind, but thought better of it when I realized that the patrons of the building might think I was spying on them. For now, I will enjoy their visits in real time.